My Commissioner is well disposed toward this Institution. I made two or three lectures against intemperance, and encouraged the people to educate themselves and accumulate property. At my exhibition three lawyers were present and forty or fifty other whites.
The Commissioner did not examine me, saying that this school was the best in the world and he never intended to examine a pupil from it. He was a Saturday-Sunday man and did not do any business on Saturday. I tramped a week and a half for a school and found one on Col. ——’s place. Parents want their children whipped, and do not think they are taught any thing unless they are whipped.
Some of us had a convention on temperance, tobacco and morals. The colored people own a good deal of land and make lots of cotton. One man made twenty-one bales, but saved only eighty dollars.
Col. —— said Atlanta University must be the best disciplined school in the State. The poor whites do not want to go to school, and are more intemperate and degraded than the blacks. If the colored man would only stand up for his rights, he would not be hacked.
I taught in a district called “Dark Corner.” I think I gave them a right start. Had a prayer meeting which was largely attended. Poor whites use more whiskey than the colored people. Whites seem kind to blacks, lend them money and horses, and help them in every way.
I had an average attendance of thirty-three and a night-school of fifteen. Taught on an old plantation, on which there used to be five hundred slaves. Ignorance has great sway there. People have good stock, but cannot buy land. There is a temperance lodge in Camden of one hundred and forty members.
It was a bad county where I taught. I was careful about teaching there. They never had a school before. No land is owned by colored people. There is much opposition to their education. The immorality of the place is explained by the fact that they formerly had stills there. Preachers are not moral men. They are opposed to “foreign” teachers. Poor whites create a good deal of disturbance. Land is owned by those who owned it during slavery times, and they will not sell it to white or colored.
I was the first lady teacher that taught in the county and was quite a novelty. They had bad teachers. One white one was intemperate. White people were friendly. Three whites raised their hats to me, which was quite a new thing. I had a very good Sunday-school; white people attended my exhibition. They like this University very much, and the Commissioner wanted me to encourage the boys and girls to come up.
Most everybody uses whiskey and tobacco. I talked on temperance, distributed temperance papers and read to them. Took the New York Witness and read it to the people. I think I did some good among the children. The children of the poor whites are knocking about on the road all the time. They had a school one month, then gave it up. Young men spend Sunday in gambling; guess they are doing it right now. Some said I was not teaching them anything because I did not use the blue-back speller. The houses of poor whites are just like the colored, but their clothes are not so good.
The people where I taught are intelligent and well-to-do. Most of them own their own homes. The whites want the colored people educated. A speaker at an exhibition of a female seminary said that the colored people were leaving them in the dark, and if they did not look out, the bottom rail would be on the top. Six or eight colored people own from one hundred to five hundred acres and stock. The Commissioner’s wife asked me into the parlor and gave me a rocking-chair.